Reminiscent of Mortality
by marapozsa
Summary: She needs his presence like crops need rain.


**Reminiscent of Mortality**

a c a n t **h a** - c h _a n_

**Authoress' Note & Disclaimer: **This is a one-shot based on Fifteen by _sna_ that I wrote for absolutely no reason except that Fifteen was so beautiful it moved me to tears the first time I read it. No stealing or I'll hunt you down and scalp you, as well as other things that are possibly even more gruesome - just use your imagination, assuming you have such a thing. No mature content (well, not by my judging, anyway). All characters are © to their respective owners; no piracy or theft is meant by the writing of this text.

Furthermore, I don't own Naruto. I forget who does because I haven't read it for so long. And in addition to that, I'm not quite sure I care, meaning I've just joined the thousands, millions of people out there who care more about the content than those who produced said content.

You steal this and like I said before, I'll hunt you down and scalp you with my pointy metal stick. This was done randomly, something I felt like doing 'cause I was just bored; both sections can be read separately or together, take your pick. _sna_'s one-shot is better, trust me. I had a lot of trouble with the present tense but I did it anyway 'cause I didn't have anything better to do. And then I changed it to past because I had the time; then, later, back to present tense again. I revised it a little too, since the first version of it (without spell check and all that other proofreading stuff I'm supposed to do) is posted at a forum I used to be part of. I don't see any reason why I should pull up the link, so live with it. It was utter trash back then anyway. Plus, the link was really long because it was on an Invision Free (hopefully that's the right spelling) forum - where everything is jumbled, cluttered and complicated. I prefer Proboards, really, but now I'll just shut up and let you get on with reading this so I can die happily knowing at least one person made it past the **Authoress' Note & Disclaimer**.

---

_He is her anchor._

_She is his light._

Rin's house is always empty, the layers of dust everywhere as thick as the layers of blood she is forced to shed everyday. She doesn't understand life anymore; the idea of home, that small apartment on Etsuko Avenue, the feeling of a parent's arms around her as a child...Once a commiseration, but now no longer comforting to the young woman.

Almost nothing is with her. That's just part of the burden of her job, a burden she wishes she could hide as well as Kakashi could. She can't see past the rusty red haze of bloodshed, though it was ironic that she happens to be a medical kunoichi. Was it like what Kakashi saw whenever he blinked and changed focus, a red haze through the Sharingan eye?

Kakashi. She breathes in and she hears his name. Her heart's irregular, jagged rhythm beats to the sound of his breath and name. Ha. Ta. Ke. Ka. Ka. Shi. Like magic, only better. She knows she shouldn't feel this way; that he could never feel this way, because he will never and has never recognized love. He is too afraid to love. He doesn't realize that love not only took, but gave.

He is, in effect, afraid of love - a laughable thought, as so many others covet love so much they will do anything to gain it.

But that is quite acceptable for Rin. He fears little else. In her eyes, it makes up for the fact he isn't afraid of anything else. (Or if he ever is, he never shows it – her knight in shining armour, she likes to make believe.) It makes him seem human...Except humans love. They love and are loved in return. But he has no love himself; and that is another one of his few fears, that he might die alone and without having ever known love.

Love. Her pale lips form the single syllable as she continues her humble shuffle down the street, keeping to the back alleys and avoiding crowds. She knows she should have shed her ANBU-issued uniform by now, that she would have been walking through the front door of her home by now if she had gone the right way...No, her apartment, not her home. But had it ever really been hers, even? There was nothing there Rin could even pretend to treasure save that picture: the picture taken on a sunny day in the fall, brown and honey golden, of a sensei and his three students...Kakashi, Rin and Obito. The perfect three? No. But at least she had felt like she'd had a home then - the three names sounded so perfect together, like three parts of a simple puzzle that was only complete with all three. Now...

Her gentle brown eyes close; she shoves her hands into her pockets and is suddenly glad for the mask that classified her as ANBU. Only partially conscious of the way she is taking (she has come this way so often it is her personal beaten path,) because it is the way she always takes. She turns a corner, the moon suddenly overhead and bathing her in harsh, practically blinding rays of its silver light. She opens her eyes again, instinctively seeking some sort of relief from the full moon's luminescence but unable to find it.

Now - well, now, there were only two. Only two pieces; the puzzle was no longer complete.

Obito. She whispers the name sadly behind the feline mask (reminescence does not bode well for Rin's mental state, and painful memories are not good for the human body, she remembers him reprimanding her), her flesh aching for his touch again, whenever he would kiss her on the cheek or laugh at her playfully, or even spar with her at the training fields. Then another image comes to mind, one that always makes her guilty that she always thought of Obito first, thinking that her unconditional love was wrong, that she was wrong. It scares her - that simple image of Kakashi's hurt expression whenever she and Obito would be together, laughing or just talking, evident even when his Konoha hitae-ate shaded his unnaturally pale face and he turned away from them. She was a woman now - what did he think, that she didn't love him the same way she loved Obito? That he wasn't important to her too? That Kakashi wasn't as much a part of Rin as Obito had been - and still was?

It was true that when Obito had died - alone, she knew, and felt guilty every time she mulled over that bitter day - a part of her heart had died. But the same had happened when their Sensei had died. The same happened every time she was forced to coat her hands in blood as she donned that telltale mask: the one she wears even now, the one that breaks her emotions' thin barricade instead of reinforcing it (its purpose in life, you could say, something which Rin - sadly - thought she had not an ounce of.) Each time she thought of Kakashi now, she thought of his hands. How they, too, were coated in blood, how it was because of his decision to become ANBU that she had as well. Demanded it. Wanted it. Longed for it.

And how he had been so fiercely against it. How he knew that she would follow him wherever, whenever...Forever. And it scared him. He wanted to forbid it, and nearly did, but he hadn't had the nerve.

Because of the promise. Only because of the promise he made, she thinks fiercely, resolutely, to herself, taking another turn to end up on the same street, the one where she always went, the one on which he lived. Her gentle eyes become far more melancholy every time she realizes this, as she realizes her heart knows her better than her head (and really, there's no reason why it shouldn't.) As she realizes, and not for the first time, that Kakashi has become her anchor to earth. The reason she lives. The reason she is still even partially humanoid and not a corpse forced to dig her own grave in cold frozen winter ground. Alone (because no one will love a dead carcass of human flesh the same way they'll love a living one).

She will always come back to him. Always, because he is her breath on nights like this, when she opens her eyes and looks at her hands and sees the hands of a murderer instead of the healer he knows her truly to be. Only in his presence can she remember that. Only when he is there. The grey apartment door she knew so well, 39C Ichiraku Street, the closed black curtains against which his silhouette, his shadow could be seen. Ironic, really, because Rin knows that whatever she sees whenever she looks at Kakashi is only a tiny, infinitely miniscule, microscopic part of him - the part that is logical and cold, the part that does not and has never known love, the part that is there for her every time she ends up on this street again...But only because of that promise. Funny how two simple words like, 'I promise' would have had such a big impact on their lives.

Rin wishes with all of her being and essence that she could unlock the other side of him - the side which Kakashi locked away for the sake of his reputation, so that he would not become another White Fang, another Konoha failure. But she knows, too, that he has locked up the key, too, in a keyless safe that will probably never be opened ever again. At the age of thirteen, this had already happened...He had already become a boy whose heart was locked away, just like in that movie she'd seen as a child. What had it been called? Oh, yes. Howl's Moving Castle.

The question she wanted an answer to was if she had a key to that supposedly keyless safe, if she could be Sophie and he Howl and she could save him and have a happy ending.

But then again, happy endings aren't anything usual to reality. It's referred to by the average human being as the stuff of fairy tales, where magic and myth were prominent and happiness could almost always be found by the main characters.

The villain was always killed.

The curse was always broken.

And never once had Rin seen a fairy tale in which the protagonist didn't get a happy ending of their very own.

But people are like that. They want to believe that they could have happy endings, so they make up happy endings for themselves for for make believe people to satisfy their usually insatiable need for the optimistic side of life. As her Ero-sensei had once said - for once when he wasn't referring to a quote from one of his perverse little orange books - it was easy for someone to be happy, but it took a really good person to make something out of the world's sadness...And the perversities, too, which was where he'd said he'd come in. She snorts at the thought of him, before she falls silent again.

I'm here again, she notes silently as if she were talking to herself. I always come here. It's my real home, the only familiar ground I can stand on without falling now. There is no other haven for me but with him. Kakashi.

The name rolls off her tongue before she can stop herself, the k's bitter on her tongue but the 'shi' so sweet for her feminine voice that speaks on levels of angelic innocence only she could represent. Once again it's like magic - that element of life that she still believes in, the element that gave everyone innocence. Everyone but her, whose hands were coated in the blood of innocents and convicts alike, the one who was forced to kill someone almost everyday, to break apart families and orphan children. Just like she kills another part of Kakashi every time she does this, every time she feels like she would die and that if he wasn't there then she would be all alone. That she would die alone, alone without anyone who she loved there beside her. At least if she died with Kakashi she could be on familiar ground as she died, even in a hole she digs herself.

Rin tries to sigh and let out some of her turmoil-struck feelings, but only a faint whisper of such a sound escaped her pale lips, brushing against the entirety of her mental and emotional being much in the same way as she brushed the doorbell with a gloved finger, and then let the gloved hand drop to her side. She knows the way in, and unlike a regular shinobi, it is not through the front door - but the back. Always the back door for her. Always and forever. //

_Terrible things happen to demons when they receive an angel's touch._

// Kakashi knows that Rin is coming the minute she steps through his back door, disabling all the customary traps like she always does, no matter how many times he'd try to change it, which wasn't very many. He knows that it would have been like shutting the door in her face; the fact that he never tried to change his security system any more was as close as he would ever give to an open invitation to anyone, even Rin. He couldn't do that. It would go against everything he knew: that he should be there for her because he is her anchor to the physical world, that Obito's voice in his head would never cease if he did that, that he himself would never forgive himself for it.

He could hear the vibrations of her steps as she got closer to him; he sits still on his bed, the flimsy mattress squeaking to protest the weight, waiting.

It's always waiting with Kakashi. He sets the pace for Rin no matter how grueling the progress might be, he sets down laws and boundaries for her no matter how restricting they might seem (he tells himself they're all for her safety, but safety for a child who has never been safe is difficult to procure), and he sets down her route through life no matter how winding that path happens to be. The amazing thing is that despite this, Rin had always followed him before, like a faithful hound that would always come back to its owner no matter how many times it was beaten.

It hurts him to see her like that, almost cowering on the ground, and yet it gives him a sense of worth that also gave him wings; it made him happy to know that she will always trust him no matter what; and it made him seem human even though he knew he was as far from human as anyone could be in a sense that was the polar opposite of Rin's. She wasn't human because she cared and loved selflessly just like an angel, a heavenly being worthy of the skies; he was not human because he was hidden cold and heartless behind a facade of icy indifference. She was his light, his salvation, the one who he had always hoped would be the one that could save him.

Just like in a fairy tale.

And, he thought, no one else had so much love in their heart, but then again, neither did they have as much chaos in their heart as he did. They could all love, couldn't they, when he couldn't love anyone for fear it would only be lust in another form.

Almost anyone. Everyone but Rin is considered unworthy of his version of love; he tries every time she came to him for comfort to give her love the same way she offers it so freely to him - what must it be like to be able to give some much of oneself and still retain a sense of being someone? - but he always fails. 

Always.

It never comes even close, because of that tiny voice in his head...Obito's voice - that little brat, he calls him bitterly - hisses at him and eats away at his fragile conscience each time, every time, saying that he shouldn't be trying to push Rin away, that he had made a promise. Kakashi generally assumes that Obito doesn't realize he is doing his best at the beginning - or maybe he, too, thinks that Kakashi's best will never be enough. Nothing is enough for Rin, after all, because she is content with just about anything. Looking at it in Rin's point of view, even Kakashi is unable to do better than he is doing for her right now.

His Sharingan eye lay unblinking, exposed to the cold autumn breeze without the hitae-ate to protect it; it stares at Rin without any sign of emotion as she sheds her ANBU-issued armour, then the footwear, and then finally the mask (he hates that mask, as does Obito, but he's never bothered to tell her so for fear that she will think it's because of the face beneath). The black mesh all ANBU wore on duty underneath reveals every innocent curve of her body, shifting when she does and giving Kakashi a view of what was underneath that he feels he shouldn't have been privileged with.

(He tries not to see Rin in much more than a brotherly way of affection; he's not worth much more than that.)

She shivers in a sudden autumn chill; he finally stands, silver hair flopping over his two different eyes, and closes the distance between them with two strides. She shudders again as she curls both of her arms around him, burying her head in his chest as she lets unshed tears find their way from her tear ducts out of her eyes and down her long elegant lashes. He holds her tight, both relishing the feel of another's touch as they close their eyes and just soak in that almost alien feeling.

"Thank you," she manages to murmur, lifting her head to allow Kakashi to stroke the green and brown stripes on her cheeks like he always does. He nods absent-mindedly, gloved hands tracing the second stripe on her left cheek, and then glances at her shoulder. He scowls darkly beneath the mark. Obito frowns, too, muttering how she shouldn't have the mark of the ANBU there, that her skin should be unblemished always and forever - just like her soul's clarity. Kakashi agrees mentally, before turning his attention back to Rin. She needs him most, after all. Obito grows silent, wishing with all his might that he could be the one holding Rin. Kakashi basks in the feeling even more, trying to give Obito a taste of it too, although it only provokes a spark of resentment from him. Rin notices his uncharacteristic behavior and whispers, making Obito feel hurt without actually intending to, "Please, Kakashi. I don't want it to be just the three of us again. I don't want to relive my childhood just to have it taken away from me the minute I leave you. I just want Kakashi. The real you. Please...Tell me you can give that to me."

Kakashi's frown grows deeper, the expression evident though he had yet to remove his black mask. But when he sees Rin's needy eyes, usually so innocent and happy, now so sad and frail, he nods reluctantly (he knows that broken promises will only hurt her more, but if all he can give her is an illusion, then he'll gladly give it to her). Obito makes an angry sound in his head, then becomes quiet again when he realizes - and not for the first time - that Rin needs this, just like she always does...His only problem was that he had never been able to get used to it. Kakashi holds her tighter, more possessively, planting a gentle kiss on her clear forehead - clear like her heart and spirit.

He nods again, if only to assure himself and fortify his decision even more. Rin smiles in relief and pure angelic joy, and then buries her head into his chest again, breathing in his heady scent of frankincense (she's not sure if letting it caress her like that is crossing the invisible line they've set, but it's too late to fix it now); he holds her close just like she does to him and breathes in her gentle lavender scent. Soon, as always, it will be just the two of them once again.

_She is his light._

_He is her anchor._


End file.
